I didn’t always have Self-Worth and Voice.

Actually, it was the insults that got me there. Insults that wreaked havoc in my life and initiated me.

I can best describe this if I tell you a Story. I’m a woman so putting fists up to engage the battle, by way of the Hero with a weapon in hand, is not my Journey. My Journey is rooted differently.

We’re here at a time in history when all is changing, we are called to new ways because the old ways aren’t working — and truthfully, there is nothing stronger than the core strength of a Woman. This new way is the Heroine’s Journey®.

To get on with the Story: The setting is women entering male-dominated organizations, and that’s just what I did when I joined the International Rotary Organization. This Story isn’t so much about Rotary, as about how the culture was a fierce beast for me as a woman.

I took this venture on with a vengeance. I knew that there were cultural norms in the bigger Organization, so I started a new Club — and I made up the ‘rules’ there. At my first meeting as President of this new Club, with burgeoning membership of 50 joyful faces, I began.

I had a white flip chart, and I explained the ‘rules’: ‘wine but no winners,’ ‘say what you need to say, just say it kindly’ and more. It was a consensus, and any could be eliminated before agreement — just hopefully, this would set some ground rules that we could all live successfully within.

The year went swimmingly: Best New Club, lots of fun, amazing accomplishments, big dollars in the Club Treasury — all good — and the District named the Club the ‘Best New Club in Recent Memory.’

Within a year, I was thrown out of the Club, disgraced in town, and stripped of all accomplishments with the Club.

What happened? Well, this.

Combine sexual harassment with greed and ego, and there you’ve got it.

The incoming President of the Club, who I had formerly picked to take that role, actively sexually harassed me, and I couldn’t make it stop. He thought I should marry him, adopt a child with him, help him to climb the Rotary ladder all the way up to top leadership. He inappropriately touched me in Club meetings, rang my doorbell for four-plus hours at a time, walked into my house without invitation — he was the Dragon I had to contend with.

This severely damaged my business, as I refused his requests, and he became retaliatory. He was now the power person, and the other men in the Club rallied around him. They isolated me.

Finally, I looked to the bigger leadership for desperate relief. I filed a sexual harassment complaint with the District Office. This was nearly a decade ago before there were tangible and respectful ways to deal with this abominable situation.

This District’s response was to ignore my filing, and no one ever contacted me. They made some effort to slap the Harasser on the hand. That was pretty much it. I got nothing, except for more trouble.

Now it was war. The guy was going to make sure that I was blackballed for such an outrageous act as disputing his manhood.

I shrunk, stopped going to the meetings, and left the Club. I was embarrassed in town — like I had done something wrong. I got depressed, lost energy for my life and work, and isolated myself. I was fearful and scared. The fullness of all that I had created shrunk like a balloon around me that nearly suffocated me.

I had no Self-Worth, and I had no Voice. I was invisible and mute.

I lost hope. My business failed; my friends were gone.

Had there not been a flicker inside of me, it could have ended there. But surely a Heroine was inside of me. She had to find her way.

What I had to do was to nurture was my Self-Worth and my Voice. My Strength would come from the core inside of me. I carried no weapons or means for the brutal attacks, which would be the course for a Hero.

I was crafting the Heroine because the Journey for a Heroine is unique. Thank goodness it doesn’t involve putting on the male suit of amour. I’d already tried this approach when I worked on Wall Street in the first part of my career, and then I thought that the male way was the way.

Now I know that keeping my femininity, in fact, is not only a good thing, but my right and that my freedom, joy, and prosperity should not be impaired when I chose my sovereign way.

Fast forward to ten years. I inhabited my life again.

Sitting in my office one day, I boldly penned a letter to each one of the International Rotary Board Members, and the International President. I carefully explained all of the enormously wonderful things that I’d so happily accomplished in my Rotary career — and dramatically appealed to them that it was against the greater good of the organization that I had been treated with such unabashed resentment.

Like Rosa Parks, I wasn’t going to give up my seat. I had stepped into my Fierce Feminine.

This got a response. The head of all of Rotary Membership was assigned to me to revisit what had happened to me in those earlier years.

We worked on this for nine months. She interviewed all of the leadership in my District, tried to dig up old records, and tried to establish what had transpired. It developed that my complaint had been thrown in the round file (the trash can); that there was no documented action taken; and that at the time, they had just shoved the ‘elephant under the rug’ — but those interviewed knew of my complaint.

They had documented my membership record as — ‘She resigned from Rotary.’

Here’s the Kicker — the big ‘WOW’…and what determined that I couldn’t let this continue!

I learned that the very guy who had been responsible for throwing me out of the Club was now taking the helm of District leadership! He was being rewarded for his lineage in the club organization when he had made me brutally suffer.

So, I penned a fact-filled letter to him too — and with my readied Voice declared that he was not fit for Rotary leadership.

That part of me that would have backed away and shrunk at another time was now wanting full expression of my authentic self. I was no longer fearful of male reprisal because I felt a core inside of me that I knew was stronger.

And, I knew that the message I was promoting wasn’t just for me. It was for every woman World-Wide that chose to support the ideals of the Organization. The Organization could not promote the protection of the World and solving World problems — if it wasn’t keeping women safe within Rotary.

The woman I was working with at Rotary International knew this too. And, she knew that this was a task of reshaping culture. As we talked, she suggested that now was a time that I could rejoin a Rotary Club, and be of service.

She told me in our phone call that the Harasser was thrown out of his Rotary Club for sexually harassing other women. He’d gotten to stay all these years later in Rotary, but finally, rather recently, he’d been ousted.

I breathed a sigh for that, but that didn’t last long.

I did join a new Club. One that was many miles from my old club, and the Harasser’s ex-Club. I was welcomed and appreciated by my new Club. I was glad to be back — I’d longed for the fellowship and purpose of belonging.

On a telling day, the newest District Governor (the leader in the area for the Club) came to our Club to give his speech. I introduced myself to his assistant, and she disclosed to me that the Harasser had just been re-admitted into the District Governor’s Club!

I protested loudly, saying that he had sexually harassed me and been thrown out of his Club for harassment. The District Governor said, “he had come highly recommended to him.” I protested that that was nonsense; he was harmful.

I immediately called the woman I’d been working with for Membership at Rotary International. She was dumbfounded, as she did not know the Harasser’s return to Rotary. And, she said she would speak to the Rotary International Lawyers about the situation.

I asked her for the Sexual Harassment Guidelines for Rotary, which she gave me. When I read them, I discovered that they were woefully inadequate. There was no procedure, standards, guidelines — nothing that offered protection.

I pointed out to her — and she got it as a woman — that Sexual Harassment is a safety issue. I did not resign from my Rotary Club — I was not SAFE there. No one in the Rotary District had been available to me to help to create the safety I desperately needed.

I rewrote the Sexual Harassment Policy Guidelines and sent them to her.

At home, I was attending my Club meetings and aware that I could be at risk. One fateful Tuesday, when we meet, I walked out of the Club meeting room, which led through the restaurant bar, towards my exit route. There, sitting at the end of the bar right smack in my path, was the guy I had pin-pointed as sexually harassing women.

I turned on my heels and went back into the room. The guys in my Club later walked out with me. I immediately called the Membership Director at Rotary International and told her about the incident.

She quickly said, “Do not go back to your meetings, and I will call your Club President to tell him that you are not safe there.” I didn’t get it, really until she said that — that this man was stalking me!

He was stalking me after ten years, and still determined to crash my Self-Worth and Voice. But I was stronger now. The Heroine had arisen in me. My Courage and Strength were from within.

As the old saying goes, ‘there is nothing stronger than a woman who stands firmly grounded in herself.’

Weeks later, I was out volunteering at my friend’s animal rescue when I got a call on my cell phone. Who was calling? That same District Governor that had gleefully announced to me that he accepted the Harasser into his Club — was now calling me to tell me that the leadership of his Club had nobly decided to rescind the Harasser’s membership. That it was “the right thing to do,” he said.

I wasn’t fooled — I knew that that message had come right from Rotary’s International’s Lawyers — at least they’d heard about the ‘Me Too’ Movement.

I finished the phone call by asking that my message be communicated to the District that this would no longer be tolerated — and he said, “I didn’t have to speak up, it went around like wildfire.”

But the real icing on the cake was not about me — it was this. This is what I am really proud of. This is my Heroine’s Voice speaking. This was a solution that made real change. This was the contribution that the work that I have done on me personally led up to. This was glory.

The big Board of Rotary International accepted my draft rewriting of the Sexual Harassment Guidelines for the Organization and voted to include them into the Procedures of Rotary World-Wide. I had spoken powerfully into the human conversation. This is my legacy.

My Self-Worth and my Voice are intact. And, my contribution was made. This is the way of the Heroine — The Heroine’s Journey®. The universal Journey that all women must take. The Journey that is uniquely patterned for Women.

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